Communities around the world are beginning to feel the impacts of climate change, including increasing temperatures, sea level rise, and intensifying storms. Many are taking action through lifestyle changes and new technologies that can help mitigate environmental issues on small scales. However, for these individual-level changes to make an impact, many people need to implement them. So how do we make sure everyone has access?
New agricultural technologies can help farmers make sustainable and profitable changes to their practice, but efforts around promoting these technologies tend to promote initial adoption with little follow-up. In a new paper published in Environmental Research Letters, IRIS researchers dig deeper, asking what determines access, and how likely people are to continue with the changes after initial implementation.
The study focuses on groundwater irrigation technologies in rural India as a case study in sustainable practice adoption. This technology in particular has boosted agricultural productivity and helped farmers become more resilient to monsoons. While there is a significant amount of work on adoption and its relationship with poverty, the authors, led by UGA professor of natural resources policy Sechindra Vallury, found a notable lack of research on the relationship between micro-level caste-based inequalities and groundwater irrigation.
“The study started from this interest in groundwater irrigation in India… The diffusion of groundwater technology has been massive, and it played a twofold role: it boosted agricultural productivity, but it was also a poverty alleviation tool,” Vallury, Odum School of Ecology professor of natural resources policy, explained.
The authors enlisted the help of UGA environmental anthropologist Don Nelson, whose research focuses on climate adaptation and how community capacities for change develop over time. Together, the team analyzed how access to groundwater technology was systematically different for households of different castes. They chose to focus on caste-based inequalities “because these are some of the most pronounced, long-standing, and deeply entrenched social inequalities in the rural Indian context.” They set three main hypotheses:
- Farmers adopt groundwater irrigation technology at unequal rates, with those belonging to historically marginalized groups being the least likely to adopt.
- Groundwater irrigation technology adoption boosts household income, but the distribution of income gains varies between historically marginalized groups and historically advantaged groups.
- Farmers sustain groundwater irrigation technology adoption unequally, with those belonging to historically marginalized groups being the least likely to continue usage.
“While there’s some research on household productivity or income post-adoption, there’s limited evidence on the variability of post-adoption outcomes across social groups, especially regarding the use-benefits and continuation (or discontinuation) of technologies among marginalized groups,” Vallury said. “With agricultural technology innovations gaining increased prominence, we attempt to provide evidence of their differential benefits across social groups and highlight the need to examine adoption as more than a simple initial binary decision.”
The three hypotheses were evaluated through two rounds of the India Human Development Survey (IHDS), a national household-level effort that surveys over 41,000 households across India on topics including caste, income, agriculture, education and more. Using this data, the authors found support for all three of their expected outcomes. Highly marginalized groups were far less likely to adopt groundwater irrigation technology, had a 31% smaller predicted increase in crop income than households of more forward castes, and were significantly more likely to discontinue use than more advantaged groups.
“We need to examine the lifecycle of technology adoptions instead of just looking at initial adoptions or aggregate adoption rates,” Vallury concluded. For sustainable technologies to have a successful “no one left behind” approach, social inequities have to be addressed early on, and evaluated throughout their life cycle.
Our analyses indicate that within India, social status significantly shapes groundwater irrigation technology adoption, which can be attributed to unequal access to skills, education, information, and capital endowments. Moreover, while technology adoption yields increased benefits on crop income, the benefits of adoption appear to vary substantially across households based on social groups.
This work is an early part of a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant that will look at a similar concept with newer sustainable technologies and practices, focusing on climate-smart agriculture and interventions in India. Read the full paper here to learn more.
Featured image: Canning, West Bengal, India by Kuntal Biswas via Pexels